Beverly Ferris is battling the flu. Once she feels better, she intends to drive to a health rehabilitation center in Massachusetts, where she will give her daughter, Jamie Lee Ferris, some news she's waited years to hear:

Leo Ferris, Jamie's dad, will finally receive the credit he deserves.

Beverly is Leo's widow. Her husband died in 1993 of Huntington's disease, which gradually strips the body of basic muscle control. The disease was inherited by Jamie, 44, who didn't learn she had it until she was an adult.

Even as her illness began stripping away her muscle function, Jamie helped Beverly with a family campaign. They wanted to make sure Leo's role in basketball history would not be forgotten, a quest that will be realized on March 26, when an extraordinary monument is unveiled in Armory Square.

It will take the shape of a 24-second shot clock, the great National Basketball Association innovation that came out of Syracuse. An anonymous donor paid more than $50,000 to put it up.

Leo Ferris, general manager of the Syracuse Nationals when the clock was introduced, will be among the names in the inscription.

"He would have been so happy and thrilled, and Jamie will be so happy and thrilled, " Beverly said. "She was her father's pride and joy."

The celebration really began last night. The Golden State Warriors played an NBA game in Philadelphia, whose 76ers moved there from Syracuse in 1963. To honor that heritage, the 76ers wore "throwback" Nats jerseys. At halftime, basketball Hall of Famers Dolph Schayes and Earl Lloyd - both former Nats - were honored on the 50th anniversary of the only NBA championship won by a team from Syracuse.

While the Armory Square monument is in the shape of a shot clock, its deeper purpose is recalling that era, when Syracuse was home to some of basketball's greatest innovators. The founder and president of the Nats was Danny Biasone, who realized by the early 1950s that intentional slowdowns and stalling tactics were killing the game.

His team included Schayes, one of the elite players in league history, and Lloyd, a power forward who was the first African-American to set foot in an NBA game. Then there was Ferris, the general manager, who in the brief span between 1949 and 1955 played a role in almost every major change in basketball.

As president of the old National Basketball League, his daring raids on college talent forced a merger with the more prestigious Basketball Association of America - a merger that created today's NBA. In Syracuse, Ferris led a community fund-raising drive to save the Nats and also helped Biasone to build a team that would one day win the league title.

Their combined energies helped to bring about a shot clock. Biasone was obsessed with finding a rule to end stalling by limiting time of possession. Jack Andrews, longtime basketball writer for The Post-Standard, often recalled how Ferris would sit at Biasone's Eastwood bowling alley, scribbling potential shot clock formulas onto a napkin.

The result was a proposal that forced teams to shoot within 24 seconds of touching the ball. It was used for the first time on Aug. 10, 1954, during an experimental NBA scrimmage played for league executives at Blodgett Vocational High School, Biasone's alma mater.

The clock was adopted. Scoring increased by more than 13 points a game. Professional basketball, fast-paced and exciting, was on its way to being truly major league. Since then, sports historians would agree:

A rule born in Syracuse saved the NBA.

"This is a very big piece of sports history, and it impacted the game at every level, " said Syracuse Parks Commissioner Pat Driscoll, who will coordinate the March 26 ceremony with John Rathbun of the Syracuse Convention and Visitors Bureau and Dennis Brogan, the city's director of neighborhood services.

The unveiling of the monument, designed by architect Bob Haley, will coincide with the arrival of big crowds for NCAA "Sweet 16" men's tournament games at the Carrier Dome. Schayes and Lloyd have promised to show up for the event, while fellow Hall of Famers John Havlicek and Bill Walton are also expected to attend.

It was Schayes, several years ago, who first suggested a working shot clock as an outdoor monument. Driscoll and other organizers say it will often show up on national television, especially when camera crews leave the Dome to capture local flavor.

That means Jamie Lee Ferris, watching college games from her wheelchair in Massachusetts, will routinely see a monument that honors some great thinkers - like her father.

This inscription will appear on the 24-second shot clock monument, to be unveiled March 26 at Armory Square:

"This clock honors the rule that changed basketball and saved the National Basketball Association. The 24-second shot clock, which put an end to stalling tactics that were threatening the league, was used for the first time in an NBA scrimmage organized by Danny Biasone on Aug. 10, 1954, at Blodgett Vocational High School in Syracuse. In the first season with the clock, league scoring would rise by 13.6 points per game.

Coach Howard Hobson of Oregon and Yale is credited with the original idea, and many helped Biasone to bring the clock to fruition in Syracuse, notably Emil Barboni and Leo Ferris. It was Ferris and Biasone who devised a formula for the shot clock, selecting "24" by dividing 2,880 (the number of seconds in a 48-minute game) by 120 (the average number of shots in a game).

Because of the vision and persistence of Biasone, president and founder of the Syracuse Nationals, his fellow NBA owners embraced the shot clock, now used in some form on almost every level of the game."

About Sean Kirst

Former Post-Standard columnist Sean Kirst wrote about civic issues affecting Syracuse and Central New York. ... More about Sean»